First, let me assure you that I have never attended a cock fight, nor will I ever. I find the whole idea to be abhorrent and disgusting. I knew they did occur in Mexico, but really knew nothing about them. About six months ago my friend Elvis' older brother became quite interested and traveled to Mexico City to pick up two of them at a cost of $500.00 if you can believe. Oddly enough he is a veterinarian and owns five clinics.
Since then Elvis has gone to several of the meets (or whatever they call them) Apparently a lot of money is exchanged and it can cost 1,000 to 5,000 pesos just to enter your cock. He became quite fascinated with cock fighting.
One night Elvis asked me what I knew about farms in Alabama. I knew enough to know that I would not go near one and had a very dim opinion of Alabama. Then is realized he was talking about farms that raised and sold cocks. We still have a huge communication problem. His brother told him that Alabama had the best cocks in the world. He was very interested in getting to know more about cocks and asked me to do a computer search. (You do know that we are talking about chickens, don't you? GOOD!)
Well as I am typing away doing a Google search, I could not help but wonder what new wonderful spam mail would I be receiving. I managed to find Red Fox Farms. I guess the biggest and best cocks anywhere. They had a very nice web site with pictures of them. I had no idea they were so beautiful. Some are blue and green, mixed with red and yellow. I also learned that a pullet is a hen and a stag is a rooster, Okay, I was a city boy and know nothing about farm animals. The price was about half what they cost in Mexico. While the site gave a list of "most asked questions". Elvis wanted to know about the cost of shipping to Mexico and what, if any problems would there be with Mexican customs. I tried to email the farm, but it would not accept my email address. A box popped up that said I had to register my email address with them.
Some thing told me that I did not want to be registered with an Alabama Cock Farm, so I agreed to call them the following day. One thing I was sure about; I was not about to have them delivered to my door. Nor would I go to Mexican customs to claim ten fighting cocks. The next day, I reached a very sweet lady at the cock farm and told her why I was calling. I also tried to make it clear that the cocks were not for me. So, I was secretly pleased when she told me that they could not sends birds for fighting purposes over the state line. I figured that most of the county would have bans against cock fighting, with the exception of a few "red neck" states in The South. She said they could only send them in pairs "for the purpose of breeding them". What a relief, I thought.
That night I tried to explained to Elvis the problem of shipping fighting cocks in the U.S. I thought he would be very disappointed. NO! His face lit up and he was quite excited about the prospect. He immediately called his brother and while I have no idea what the conversation was about I could tell by Elvis' animation that they were both very excited about it. When he was off the phone, I asked if he understood that he had to order a hen with each cock. Did he plan on breeding them and raising the little chicks? I asked what he expected to do with the hens. He said, "We will eat them!" That would certainly be the most expensive chicken dinner anyone had ever had.
The next day, he had a new plan. He had a friend at the border in Tijuana that "might" be able to sneak them across the border. This certainly signaled danger in my view and I once again had to explain that the problem was that fighting cocks cannot be sent across the Alabama border so there was no way to get them to California. He did not want to give up. Fortunately, his brother proved to have the cooler head and put the kibosh on the whole plan. He did not want the hens and had no desire to raise chicks. What a relief, I thought. Can't wait to hear his next plan.
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